Pouring out my effort

Jinghua speaks of his experience as a trainee in CMC's migrant teacher training program

I used to teach in a private school in the countryside. Since I keep pouring my effort to my work as well as the humorous teaching method learned from my teachers, I was so confident about my teaching skills. When I received praise from students and their parents, I was even proud of myself. For such a long time, I thought I was qualified to teach in primary school although I was not highly educated.

At the very beginning of this semester, I heard that there would be a teacher training program with limited quota of people. Because of the curiosity and willing to learn, I signed up for the training immediately. Someone told me this training was just organized for young teachers, so it was unnecessary for whose who had been teachers for over ten years. As for me, I would never stop longing for knowledge and better teaching methods.

The training enables me to know more about myself. I was deeply absorbed when I attended teacher Misty’s (the head teacher of teacher training program) first class. I thought I was a humorous teacher, however, compared to her, I was so outshone. Further more; I would never forget the first question she raised, “What is the most important tool in class?” After listing nearly a whole page, I was so pleased with my various kinds of answers. However, I was entirely shocked when Ms. Misty showed her answer to me. I never realized that teacher himself/herself is the most important tool in class. How can the other tools performed well without the present of teacher? At that moment, I made my mind to attend all the lessons of this program.

The training changed the relationship between me and my students. I used to take it for granted that one’s intelligence quotient was unchangeable. Thus according to their scores, I consciously divided them into good students and bad students. As a result, the good became better, while the bad became worse. This training teaches me that students’ intelligence should not be judged merely by their scores. Many of them are excellent at other fields. From then on, I began to change my attitude towards the so-called bad students and tried to encourage them instead of blaming. Once in a handicraft class, I praised a “bad” student for his exquisite skills, encouraging others to learn from him by saying he was the cleverest student in the class. Soon afterwards his parent visited me and told me that his kid was so happy when being praised. And even his enthusiasm of study was stimulated.

Last but not least, the skills of class management were improved during this training. Most of the students in my class have a good sense of discipline. However, I was worried that some of the naughty students might affect class reputation. Soon I got an inspiration from the training and elected the most mischievous student as discipline inspector. Being one of the class leaders, he realized that he should be a good example of others and really did what fits his position.

In the last parents’ meeting, I shared what I have learned with the parents together with the students’ performance. The majority of them quite agreed with my opinion especially on the attitudes towards the score. Instead of reporting the score of every student, I first told them a story. Once there was a very diligent child, but he was never able to enter into the first twenty places in primary school. So he then asked his mother: “Mom, am I a stupid kid?” His mother didn’t answer. Then he worked even harder in the middle school, however, he asked the same question since he failed to enter into the first five. No reply again. When he graduated from the middle school, he decided to give up after asking the same question a third time. During the vacation, his mother decided to take him to the seaside for a trip. There they saw a flock of sparrows and seagulls were fighting for the food. The former flied easily while the latter flatter their wings clumsily. Suddenly, his mother knew the answer to the question which bothered her beloved child so many years. She turned to him and asked, “Honey, Who do you think are able to fly over the sea, the sparrows or the seagulls?” Her son didn’t answer directly, but was entirely enlightened. Though clumsy, the seagulls could fly farther and higher than sparrows. Eventually, he persisted in his ambition and successfully enrolled in Tsinghua University.

The training will be ended soon and I’m eager to learn more during the last two lessons. Hopefully more and more teachers can have the same opportunity as me, experiencing the happiness by surfing in the sea of knowledge, so that we can work hard together to improve China’s education system.

Trainees like Jinghua and seventy others attend 8 modules of teacher training over the course of a semester at a CMC community center. The teacher training focuses on (1) creating a healthier teacher-student relationship and (2) developing a more interactive classroom environment.